Status Quo Joe Finally Takes The Plunge Today

He's run or tried to run 6 times before-- only to be rejected by Democratic voters. Is 7 the charm? He's on the top of almost all the polls-- the status quo conservative alternative to change-makers Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But now that he's in, his record-- long and disgusting-- will be coming out. Will his Democratic primary supporters-- primarily blacks and the elderly-- care? He's been re-invented or re-imagined as a part of the Obama mystique. But that strategy has its limits... even for Madonna.

Reporting for Reuters yesterday, Chris Khan wrote that Biden's hgh poll numbers are bolstered by strong levels of support from minorities and older adults. According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, 32% of adults who are 55 years old and older said they would vote for Biden over other candidates. And 30% of non-white adults, including about 4 in 10 African-Americans, said they would back Biden for the nomination.

Biden's political career began as a frontman for Southern racists, a jihad against busing as a means to fight segregation, followed by a love affair with unapologetic racists like Jesse Helms. He claimed that desegregation shouldn't be a goal because it would lead to a "totally homogenous society that would prevent black people from embracing their culture and around that same time he said on NPR (1975) "I think the concept of busing... that we are going to integrate people so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest, is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride." He asked his staff if they thought he was a racist for knuckling under to sentiment from his racist constituents who opposed busing. His contempt for Anita Hill is better remembered than his jihad against busing.

Ironically, Biden is also the top choice of the plutocrats and corporatists among Democrats. As Alex Shephard noted in a Biden piece he wrote for the New Republic in December, "As a representative of Delaware, one of America’s most corrupt states, Biden is notoriously cosy with financial interests. He spent years advocating for a law that made it significantly more difficult for consumers to declare bankruptcy, before it finally passed in 2005. Elizabeth Warren called it an “awful bill” and support for it likely hurt Hillary Clinton when she ran for president in 2016. Like Clinton, Biden supported the Iraq War and the 1994 crime bill, which made mass incarceration significantly worse... [I]n a primary that may revolve around Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Biden’s obvious centrism and voting record will be liabilities that his off-the-cuff style may make worse-- it’s easy to imagine the punchy, impulsive Biden doubling down when he should be recanting. At the same time, reminders of Biden’s past stances and behavior will damage the kindly Uncle Joe image he’s cultivated over the past decade. A Biden candidacy, like Clinton’s, would serve as a reminder of the many flaws of a party establishment that an increasing number of Democrats would like to overthrow (or at least overhaul)."

Yesterday, in an OpEd for TruthDig!-- Joe Biden Is A Phony Plain And Simple-- Norman Solomon cut right to the chase: "now that he’s running for president, Biden’s huge task is to hide his phoniness... [T]he Biden campaign is depending on big checks from the rich and corporate elites who greatly appreciate his services rendered." Solomon eviscerates Biden's carefully cultivated "media image that exudes down-to-earth caring and advocacy for regular folks."

During the 1970s, in his first Senate term, Biden spouted white backlash rhetoric, used tropes pandering to racism and teamed up with arch segregationists against measures like busing for school integration. He went on to be a fount of racially charged appeals and “predators on our streets” oratory on the Senate floor as he led the successful effort to pass the now-notorious 1994 crime bill.

A gavel in Biden’s hand repeatedly proved to be dangerous. In 1991, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, Biden prevented key witnesses from testifying to corroborate Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. In 2002, as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was the Senate’s most crucial supporter of the Iraq invasion.

Meanwhile, for well over four decades-- while corporate media preened his image as “Lunch Bucket Joe” fighting for the middle class-- Biden continued his assist for strengthening oligarchy as a powerful champion of legalizing corporate plunder on a mind-boggling scale.

Now, Joe Biden has arrived as a presidential candidate to rescue the Democratic Party from Bernie Sanders.

Urgency is in the media air. Last week, the New York Times told readers that “Stop Sanders” Democrats were “agonizing over his momentum.” The story was front-page news. At the Washington Post, a two-sentence headline appeared just above a nice photo of Biden: “Far-Left Policies Will Drive a 2020 Defeat, Centrist Democrats Fear. So They’re Floating Alternatives.”

Biden is the most reliable alternative for corporate America. He has what Sanders completely lacks-- vast experience as an elected official serving the interests of credit-card companies, big banks, insurance firms and other parts of the financial services industry. His alignment with corporate interests has been comprehensive. It was a fulcrum of his entire political career when, in 1993, Sen. Biden voted yes while most Democrats in Congress voted against NAFTA.

In recent months, from his pro-corporate vantage point, Biden has been taking potshots at the progressive populism of Bernie Sanders. At a gathering in Alabama last fall, Biden said: “Guys, the wealthy are as patriotic as the poor. I know Bernie doesn’t like me saying that, but they are.” Later, Biden elaborated on the theme when he told an audience at the Brookings Institution, “I don’t think five hundred billionaires are the reason we’re in trouble. The folks at the top aren’t bad guys.”

Overall, in sharp contrast to the longstanding and continuing negative coverage of Sanders, mainstream media treatment of Biden often borders on reverential. The affection from so many high-profile political journalists toward Biden emerged yet again a few weeks ago during the uproar about his persistent pattern of intrusively touching women and girls. During one cable news show after another, reporters and pundits were at pains to emphasize his essential decency and fine qualities.

But lately, some independent-minded journalists have been exhuming what “Lunch Bucket Joe” is eager to keep buried. For instance:

• Libby Watson, Splinter News: “Joe Biden is telling striking workers he’s their friend while taking money from, and therefore being beholden to, the class of people oppressing them. According to Axios, Biden’s first fundraiser will be with David Cohen, the executive vice president of and principal lobbyist for Comcast. Comcast is one of America’s most hated companies, and for good reason. It represents everything that sucks for the modern consumer-citizen, for whom things like internet or TV access are extremely basic necessities, but who are usually given the option of purchasing it from just one or two companies.” What’s more, Comcast supports such policies as “ending net neutrality and repealing broadband privacy protections... And Joe Biden is going to kick off his presidential campaign by begging for their money.”

• Ryan Cooper, The Week: “As a loyal toady of the large corporations (especially finance, insurance, and credit cards) that put their headquarters in Delaware because its suborned government allows them to evade regulations in other states, Biden voted for repeated rounds of deregulation in multiple areas and helped roll back anti-trust policy-- often siding with Republicans in the process. He was a key architect of the infamous 2005 bankruptcy reform bill which made means tests much more strict and near-impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.”

• Paul Waldman, the American Prospect: “Joe Biden, we are told over and over, is the one who can speak to the disaffected white men angry at the loss of their primacy. He’s the one who doesn’t like abortion, but is willing to let the ladies have them. He’s the one who tells white people to be nice to immigrants, even as he mirrors their xenophobia (‘You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,’ he said in 2006). He’s the one who validates their racism and sexism while gently trying to assure them that they’re still welcome in the Democratic Party... It’s not yet clear what policy agenda Biden will propose, though it’s likely to be pretty standard Democratic fare that rejects some of the more ambitious goals other candidates have embraced. But Biden represents something more fundamental: a link to the politics and political style of the past.”

• Rebecca Traister, The Cut: “Much of what Democrats blame Republicans for was enabled, quite literally, by Biden: Justices whose confirmation to the Supreme Court he rubber-stamped worked to disembowel affirmative action, collective bargaining rights, reproductive rights, voting rights... In his years in power, Biden and his party (elected thanks to a nonwhite base enfranchised in the 1960s) built the carceral state that disproportionately imprisons and disenfranchises people of color, as part of what Michelle Alexander has described as the New Jim Crow. With his failure to treat seriously claims of sexual harassment made against powerful men on their way to accruing more power (claims rooted in prohibitions that emerged from the feminist and civil-rights movements of the 1970s), Biden created a precedent that surely made it easier for accused harassers, including Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, to nonetheless ascend. Economic chasms and racial wealth gaps have yawned open, in part thanks to Joe Biden’s defenses of credit card companies, his support of that odious welfare-reform bill, his eagerness to support the repeal of Glass-Steagall.”

One of Biden’s illuminating actions came last year in Michigan when he gave a speech-- for a fee of $200,000 including “travel allowance”-- that praised the local Republican congressman, Fred Upton, just three weeks before the mid-term election. From the podium, the former vice president lauded Upton as “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with.” For good measure, Biden refused to endorse Upton’s Democratic opponent, who went on to lose by less than 5 percent.

Biden likes to present himself as a protector of the elderly. Campaigning for Sen. Bill Nelson in Florida last autumn, Biden denounced Republicans for aiming to “cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.” Yet five months earlier, speaking to the Brookings Institution on May 8, Biden spoke favorably of means testing that would go a long way toward damaging political support for Social Security and Medicare and smoothing the way for such cuts.

Indications of being a “moderate” and a “centrist” play well with the Washington press corps and corporate media, but amount to a surefire way to undermine enthusiasm and voter turnout from the base of the Democratic Party. The consequences have been catastrophic, and the danger of the party’s deference to corporate power looms ahead. Much touted by the same kind of insular punditry that insisted Hillary Clinton was an ideal candidate to defeat Donald Trump, the ostensible “electability” of Joe Biden has been refuted by careful analysis of data.

As a former Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and a current coordinator of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network for 2019, I remain convinced that the media meme about choosing between strong progressive commitments and capacity to defeat Trump is a false choice. On the contrary, Biden exemplifies a disastrous approach of jettisoning progressive principles and failing to provide a progressive populist alternative to right-wing populism. That’s the history of 2016. It should not be repeated.

Yesterday, NBC News prepared to welcome Biden into the race by noting that The Firearm Owners Protection Act, that Biden voted for in the Senate, "overturned six Supreme Court rulings and numerous regulations, leaving a lasting legacy as both one of the most consequential gun laws of the past century and as a key political boost for the burgeoning gun rights movement. The measure allowed dealers to sell rifles, shotguns and ammunition through the mail, and, eventually, the Internet. It limited federal inspections of firearms dealers while allowing them to sell guns at gun shows, which helped them grow in size and popularity. And it made it easier for private collectors to sell guns without obtaining a federal dealers' license, which would play a role in what later became known as the 'gun show loophole.'" There's hardly a crucial issue you can find in the last 4 decades where Biden wasn't on the wrong side before flip-flopping when public opinion changed. Joe Biden is a reflexive conservative and the very opposite of a leader. The man had no core whatsoever, aside from the same "me, me, me" core that Trump suffers from.

I get invited to lots of fundraisers in Beverly Hills for canddiates courting "Hollywood money"-- even Trump fund-raisers-- but I never got invited to one for Bernie. That's because he doesn't do them. But just 2 weeks after Biden's announcement, he'll be here, sucking up to wealthy check-writers. The Hollywood Reporter reported that the "star-studded" event will be held "at the home of designer Michael Smith and his husband, James Costos, who was U.S. ambassador to Spain during the Obama administration."

This will be the first L.A. campaign fundraiser for Amtrak Joe-- though he swept through town in October for a $5,000-per-plate dinner that raised more than $100,000 for his PAC, and which was attended by Paramount's Jim Gianopulos, Sony Pictures' Tom Rothman, Entertainment Studios' Byron Allen, ICM Partners' Chris Silbermann, venture capitalist Chris Sacca, entrepreneur Jon Vein and Quibi's Meg Whitman. Co-hosts for the May 8 event-- tickets will be $2,800, the maximum any individual can give to a candidate-- are still being finalized, according to two sources, but Jeffrey Katzenberg has committed his name.

Harris has held almost a dozen L.A. fundraisers, including a March 20 event at the home of J.J. Abrams. And while she remains the favorite to win California's primary, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has stolen some of her thunder in recent weeks. The 37-year-old was in L.A. on March 29 for a taping of Bill Maher's HBO show and used that trip to make the rounds. He is expected to be back for three L.A. events on May 9-- and Ryan Murphy will co-host a major Buttigieg fundraiser at his home June 19. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, also a Hollywood favorite, toured a water reclamation plant in Playa Del Rey with L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti in honor of Earth Day on April 22. Into this fray enters Biden, whose high name recognition is, in the current climate, both an asset and a potential liability.

"People here know Joe and love him and they've been waiting for him because he's their guy. But he still needs to make the argument-- just as much as any other candidate-- how he plans to beat Donald Trump," says one consultant. "Which lane is he going to pick? Is he campaigning as the elder statesman? Or the guy who can win in the Midwest? Hopefully it will be a combo of those things."

Others, however, are saying that Biden's entry into the race isn't causing alarm bells.

"I don't think he jumps in and blows away the field," says the California-based staffer for one of Biden's rivals. "The online money won't be there for him in the way it is for Beto [O'Rourke], Bernie and Pete. The bundlers will try really hard to convince people to write him a check out of respect, but you probably won't see the groundswell that you saw for Hillary or Obama."